My wife and I are taking Hebrew classes. I haven't always been the best student, but it's been worthwhile. After a year, I'm at the point where I can read the language and have simple conversations. It's made our lives easier here. It's also taught my throat to do some calisthenics I thought were … [Read more...]

If you're on the typical college cycle, chances are you're taking Org II right now. As you are by now well aware [more aware than you wish you were, I can hear some of you say] one of the main focii of Org II is on the many different facets of carbonyl chemistry. Following on the heels of the … [Read more...]

After putting together last week's summary sheet on addition reactions to carbonyls, I thought it would be helpful to highlight some of the key points.
1. There is a direct correlation between pKa and leaving group ability. The weaker the base, the better the leaving group it is.
A … [Read more...]

My Ph.D supervisor's Ph.D. supervisor was quoted once as saying, "basically, all organic chemistry reactions boil down to nucleophile attacks electrophile."
Think about it for a minute. When you expand your concept of nucleophile beyond those species that will react with an alkyl halide in an SN2 … [Read more...]

I put together this summary sheet for the reaction of nucleophiles with carbonyls (click for larger image, see link to downloadable PDF below). It summarizes the two key concepts that are important to understand for these reactions: the effect of electronic and steric factors on nucleophilic … [Read more...]

For all of those thinking about med school: organic chemistry is not hard.
.
Complex? Yes. Challenging? Of course. A lot of facts and concepts to memorize and understand? Absolutely. But it's not hard.
...
"Hard" is calling your patient of 20 years into your office to tell him that he has a … [Read more...]

The difficulty of assigning (R)/(S) to a stereocenter can be highly dependent on the way the molecule is drawn. For example, assigning the stereochemistry of A should be a cakewalk if you are the least bit familiar with the rules, while B and C are a little more difficult. The thing is, you're not … [Read more...]

Electronegativity is one of the most useful concepts in chemistry. In a nutshell, it is a measure of how "hungry" an element is for electrons, which is a function of the number of electrons in the valence shell and the effective nuclear charge felt by them. What makes it great is its simplicity: … [Read more...]

Cal Newport's excellent blog, "Study Hacks", inspired me to think about the problem of how to learn things in the most efficient manner possible. To many students, my field of organic chemistry (or "orgo" in the undergraduate parlance) - has a fearsome reputation both as a weeder course and a … [Read more...]

About Master Organic Chemistry

After doing a PhD in organic synthesis at McGill and a postdoc at MIT, I applied for faculty positions at universities and it didn’t work out, yada yada yada. So I decided to teach organic chemistry anyway! Master Organic Chemistry is the resource I wish I had when I was learning the subject.